iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

so I’ll be on an ice floe drifting slowly & contemplatively out into the cold & dark if you need me age apart she looks like two parts dakota johnson to seven parts catherine keener & I am curious how the clone factory managed that. this is not an insult it’s a good look

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

while I was watching it I thought, how funny that the one big tell that this is a 19-yr-old’s movie is they cast a 22 yr old as a therapist & thought dressing her in laura ashley-adjacent period styles would make her look authoritative & Adult. then I looked her up & she‘s 38

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

the only actor in backrooms to speak of joss whedon should have to pay me heaps of cold cash money in punitive damages for the 20 yrs of CE’s career I missed, not because I forgot he was good but because he was too memorable in serenity for me to ever fully cleanse my mind of the whedon association

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

p.s. chewitel ejiofor is as good as can be, esp. during the part where he gets to play a very attractive resentful divorced alcoholic furniture salesman before he has to start acting like homer simpson doing jack torrance in that one treehouse of horror ep. scene would have been great without…that

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

it’s dumb but it’s not nothing and there were a couple of good things in backrooms, namely: -there were almost no people in the world. bc of the low budget I imagine. but for once that’s a good effect - the one descending shot of the hoarded house forgetting itself. overexplanation couldn’t ruin it

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

backrooms is not remotely that good. but if you think about digory crawling around between the connected attics for 20 years because time doesn’t really pass as long as you only hear it somewhere far below but can’t see it, & better that than come out & face facts re: magic apples & dying mothers

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

more people should try it! if they must be derivative. instead of sanding off the edges to streamline & ruin the source material, go to the heart & the brain & cut em right out. the more ruthless you are the clearer the shape of the empty space. name the project after another book just to be crafty

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

in the way that the jude law talented mr ripley is the definitive adaptation of the secret history. neither those who wanted the tsh adapted nor people who actually like it could have guessed that taking out the classics & the college parts would be the key. opposite of the usual hollywood method

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

watched about half of backrooms & while it is sort of disappointing taken on its own terms, it’s a much better adaptation of the magician’s nephew than I ever expected. that’ll teach me to have my biases set by the discourse of the day more later, got to get back to the wood between the worlds now

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

yeah she’s got hip issues she runs around and burrows like a champion though

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

(I know cats can’t touch poinsettias, do not worry, theodora doesn’t know how ladders or jumping work. all she knows is how to be jealous I don’t let her stand under the grow light either, I told her if she wants to be Big like a poinsettia she can hop in a pot & be watered. she will never do this

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

last year I bought the tiniest poinsettia in a 3-inch plastic container, counting on it to die when I forgot to water it for long enough. but it did not die after pretty close to a year it shamed me into buying a real pot & then doubled in size like overnight. these are a poinsettia’s tricks

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

in fact, and in spite of what discount barnes&noble bookalikes may suggest, you have to write down all your mean thoughts yourself. other people don’t follow you around collecting your remarks until you are already a famous hater. plus the pay’s not great. I understand this but it isn’t fair

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I forget who all was in it besides karl kraus, dorothy parker, fran lebowitz. it wasn’t bad for my personality or anything, it just set me up to be let down by its tacit promise that if you go around mumbling to yourself abt how awful people are, somebody will write it down & fame & fortune follow

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

but the book I think really fucked me for life was years before that, & it was less a book than a checkout-aisle giftable. this thing called the portable curmudgeon. it was like a mini bartlett’s for budding dipshits, I doubt you were supposed to sit down & read it front to back but I’m sure I did

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

want to know a horrible secret when I want to say something heartwarming about my early influences I mention my mother giving me simone de beauvoir’s memoirs of a dutiful daughter for my 13th birthday (along with the second sex). because she hoped the title would improve me, I think (it didn’t). but

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I see that in at least one edition it was titled the book of the sausage. even better don’t know anything at all about their relationship or personalities (except antony dedicated haunted britain to araminta, which is nice) but there’s no more romantic book for a married couple to collaborate on

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

people used to have range I think that kind of real range sits next to nobility in the map of the human virtues, I really do. but while I have a haunted britain right here next to me, I don’t have & probably am not going to get a copy of the book of sausages. I feel I know enough about them

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

the thing that does that for me is finding that antony hippisley coxe, of haunted britain: a guide to supernatural sites frequented by ghosts, witches, poltergeists and other mysterious beings, was also the co-author (with araminta hippisley coxe) of the book of sausages

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

(no slight is intended to the creative powers of dolly parton, I just need an exact famous comparison & she‘s it) you know how people lose their minds when they hear dolly parton wrote both jolene & I will always love you in the same day? or same week, whatever

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

AND the one novel oprah is most closely identified with is the color purple, bc of the film. & if you believe oprah inducing a huge number of majority-white daytime tv watchers to “see themselves“ in alice walker was a sin against literacy, you are a fool. even if your name is fran lebowitz

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

“seeing yourself” is excruciating phrasing but who even cares. I’m in all the real books I ever read. and if you aren’t, maybe there isn’t enough of you to fit in any book you didn’t write yourself, and I call that a tragedy that’s the meanest thing I ever said & it wasn’t even to anyone AND,

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

jesus christ i’m not done all good books are “mirrors,” if we want to adopt the language of dingdongs & declare what books “are.” this is so empty but obviously true a truism oprah might have really said it. fuckin harold bloom could have said it! the slowest squirrel still finds a nut sometime

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

if I am, it isn’t my own argument. but I know what whoever it is meant & I wish it were even less true than it is. among the art forms, novels attract more more than their fair share of bumper-sticker-style explanations of purpose (‘a book should be a window,‘ & similar). those aren’t real

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

anyway there’s a reason whoever it was didn‘t say A novel is not a mirror, a novel is a hammer. & that is because a novel so rarely is a hammer. who is it who says the novel is a fundamentally conservative form? is it possible I am thinking not of one more famous remark but of an actual argument

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

god I tried to look up the breton unquote about art is not a mirror, art is a hammer, and it‘s brecht who didn’t say it not breton. isn't it always but no matter who didn’t say it, the argument they said it in service of was not an argument they were having with oprah. this to me suggests something

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

regardless, she told lots of people to read various books, and most of them were not even bad books, however little they interested me. & then a shocking number of people did read them. many other people are still mad over it. that was her influence. selling books, not making a nation read badly

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

it’s a million years later so the one book I remember for sure she told people to read was ken follett’s the pillars of the earth. bc the bookstore I was working at at the time sold a first edition to oprah’s people & my own hands carried it to the post office never read it myself

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

all the years of idiot arguments, Is a book stupid if oprah reads it & Does an oprah sticker demean a book & Do any of the dweebs terrified of reputational damage from oprah viewers reading their books actually know the books she picks why borrow bad faith from the past we have plenty in the present

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

fran lebowitz didn’t even do it! and I think it would be easier to mount some kind of argument that she helped I worked in bookstores through several of the later oprah book club years, so I know about all the books with the blue covers & the terrible people who wanted to buy them (they had a nerve)

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I enjoy fran lebowitz & her wonderful ability to pair something that sounds good with a really enjoyable disregard for its truth, but a provocative remark is not an argument. I make them all the time, I should know. she certainly does. yes, nobody knows how to read anymore, but oprah didn’t do it

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

sometimes I get a little testy at that kind of mock-chivalrous gazing upon girls who can’t hold their creator‘s attention long enough to get any attributes out of him. not a good game & who are you trying to kid. but as soon as I see the answer is “absolutely nobody” my good nature reasserts itself

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

no but I think I will I used to get it confused with conrad’s the secret agent on account of I haven’t read that either. yet

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

melville can think of nothing for any of them to say, & one name to share among all of them look I don’t want to come over like the kind of unbearable who knows half a wikipedial fact about a dead man & starts talking familiarly about his sex life. but I don’t believe him abt the muffins

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

redburn meets three english girls who feed him on buttered muffins. so beautiful are they, he wishes he could be a buttered muffin himself. beware strange wishes in a strange land, redburn well, he cannot be a muffin so he does the next best thing & remains a bachelor the rest of his life. he says

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

“I would as soon think of striking a judge on the bench, as to lay violent hand upon their holy hides” he says. it’s true a judge has a powerful kick I think there’s an approach method if you have a distraction & your friend has a bridle, but I wouldn’t try it. rather just stay out of court if I can

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

don’t think melville sees it either. at all. but what do I know he is better on the subject of horses. a horse is a type of guy who eats oats & knows more than he’ll tell you. be polite

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

in liverpool a sketchy person chases redburn through the streets, tries to sell him some article he doesn‘t want, & loses his temper when told No as if he were the offended party. in a rare but total lapse of self-awareness redburn cannot see a mirror to his own abominable conduct to pawnbrokers

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

paris is another place I won‘t hear a word against. even when the whales are on strike, as they were the whole year I lived there

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

honestly the inside of a whale, the mariner’s ribbed cathedral or whatever they call it, seems equally unlikely to disappoint a tourist. but I’ve never been there any more than I’ve been to liverpool so I have to take melville‘s word on both

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

but I may say, contra redburn, that when I went to rome myself I wasn’t disappointed in a thing. not the vatican library not the borghese not the gelato not the whales not the cypresses not nothing. all of it was just what I wanted. to this day when I hear respighi’s whales of rome my heart rises

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

he says when jonah got et by a whale he must have felt like tourists do when they go to rome & none of the monuments are as towering or impressive as they had been led to believe. is that all there is, to a whale? like peggy lee says

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

some root vegetables are respectable and some aren’t, I guess is what it is. he says they (carrots) taste like chestnuts, if you haven’t had one & want to know during the voyage when they go by some whales he sinks down in despond bc they’re not much to look at. nothing like what he’s read about

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

his first day he stole a carrot from the hogs’ carrot stockpiles & explains its edibility in terms suggesting nobody ever ate one before unless they were livestock & brought up to it. that can’t be right like later at the boarding house nobody’s shocked by seeing potatoes by the snausage platters

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

but it reminded me powerfully of the kids in the hall bit where gavin says In england, everyone only has one spoon, and if you lose it you starve unless someone wills you their spoon, and there are spoon millionaires. do you think melville ever saw that one he’d like it

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

in the first few chapters at sea redburn nearly starves because the sailors breakfast out of a communal dish of swill & nobody told him you have to bring your own spoon, he says it’s like being at summer camp boarding school actually. but summer camp is better melville can have that note for free

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

my personal rule is still one page (double-sided permissible) for physical copies of anything I take with me to interviews, bc I still assume interviewers hate staples but like to have something to scribble on. but I formulated this rule five hundred years ago so who knows

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I used to panic about not having enough to fill two pages, then abt what if condensing it to 1 page looks like I’m strategically leaving out a decade in prison now I am too old to know what to panic about. but I never met a computer who dares to call me old to my face & when I do I’ll make it sorry

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queenofbithynia.bsky.social @queenofbithynia.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

you couldn‘t give this, & had better not take it, as job app “advice” bc it wouldn’t have worked if he’d been advised to do it. it was evidence of a certain quality or tendency about him that was real. was it good? who can say well, I could say. & did I do not remember how cold his coffee was

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